In a milestone for artificial intelligence, a computer has beaten a human champion at a strategy game that requires "intuition" rather than brute processing power to prevail, its makers said Wednesday.
Dubbed...

Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary, and his revolutionary hypothesis has withstood the test of time, despite numerous expert attempts to find flaws.
"Einstein...

The remains of five archbishops of Canterbury have been accidentally discovered by builders in a hidden tomb beneath a London church, site developers said yesterday.
Some 20 lead coffins were discovered...

The first major retrospective of gay British art opens this week at the Tate Britain gallery in London, featuring a portrait of Oscar Wilde next to his prison cell door.
"Queer British Art 1861-1967"...

From Walkmans to iPhones and classic cars to robotic arms, London's new Design Museum will offer a journey through the world of contemporary design when it opens its doors to the public next week.
The...

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Taking the bus or train to work may be even healthier than walking, according to a new study published Sunday by the American Heart Association.

"Bus/train commuters had even lower rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and overweight than the walkers or bikers," according to a press release about the findings, which were presented at the AHA's Scientific Sessions 2015 meeting this weekend.

The study, which was conducted in Japan, found that compared to drivers, public transport riders were 44 percent less likely to be overweight, 27 percent less likely to have high blood pressure and 34 percent less likely to have diabetes.

Chief of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration Boris Lozhkin openly supports the Russian tobacco company Megapolis, which monopolized 90 percent of tobacco product sales in Ukraine under former President Viktor Yanukovych, according to the famous American tabloid Examiner.

Megapolis under Yanukovych managed to monopolize cigarette sales on the Ukrainian market. The company signed long-term contracts buying almost all products produced in Ukraine by the so-called “Big Four” – British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco, Inc., Imperial Tobacco Group and Philip Morris. Then Megapolis sells them to large and small retailers, taking a large part of the profit.

The Ukrainian distributor Megapolis is a daughter company of the Russian distributor Megapolis, which controls 70 percent of the Russian tobacco market. According to Russian Forbes, the principal co-owners of the group are Igor Kesaev and Sergei Katsiev.

In 2013 they sold a 40 percent share to the transnational cigarette companies Japan Tobacco, Inc. and Philip Morris International for 1.5 USD billion. According to Forbes, a portion of the receipts from the deal were invested in weapons production companies.

In particular, Forbes calls them the “principle owners” of the Degtyarev factory, which produces Kalashnikov assault rifles (AK-47 through AK-103).

The interests of Megapolis in Ukraine’s political world are represented by Ukrainian businessman Boris Kaufman, who has on numerous occasions been linked to the Ukraine’s Presidential Administration chief Boris Lozhkin.

“Journalists of Ukraine-based Radio Svoboda made a special coverage of Kaufman who visited the Presidential Administration at nights”, noted the conservative political expert Ken Kaplan in his blog.

Ukrainian media on several occasions earlier reported on ties between Megapolis and Yanukovych family members.

It is worth noting that the Austrian bank account of Boris Lozhkin was frozen last month. Some USD 130 million had been deposited in the account from fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko. Austrian authorities are investigating the case on suspicion of money laundering.

“Many people in Ukraine connect the fact that even after the victory of the democratic revolution in Ukraine two years ago there continues to exist a monopoly created by Russian traders of weapons with the Ukrainian partner Megapolis represented by businessman Boris Kaufman.

Norwegian designer Peter Dundas spearheaded a youthful revolution in Milan on Saturday, laying out his new vision for Roberto Cavalli as other top brands also embraced rejuvenation.

The Cavalli collection was one of the most eagerly awaited of the week, being the first to take place without the company's eponymous founder who has ceded control to a private equity group.

They brought Dundas in from Emilio Pucci and the Norwegian did not waste any time in signalling a dramatic break with the past.

The rock and roll edge to the brand and its sensual, sexy core remained intact but there was some carping in the Italian media that something of its essence had disappeared.

"The new start signals the end of glamour," reported La Repubblica, although its review was broadly favourable and noted that it was too early to say if Dundas was going to give Cavalli the kind of fillip enjoyed by Gucci since Alessandro Michele took the reins there at the start of the year.

The biggest change came with the virtual axing of red carpet-style night gowns from the collection in favour of lighter and more easy-to-wear nightwear such as one ultra-short dress featuring a long train.

Alongside that there was a range of accessible denim items featuring frills, tie dye and chain fringes.

- Maintaining Cavalli's soul -

"My first task since arriving here has been to think of something different that still maintains the soul of Roberto Cavalli," Dundas said.

"Today's women are freer and looking for easier, perhaps more sporty clothes."

Relaxed, comfortable clothes were also in vogue at Bottega Veneta, which put together a very sporty collection featuring high-tech jogging pants, hooded sweatshirts and fitted gilets.

Creative director Tomas Maier took inspiration from sailing for evening dresses made from a single piece of fabric modelled on a length of sail and held together by what looked like nautical rope.

A popular campground at Yosemite National Park in California will be temporarily closed after several dead squirrels were found to be carrying the plague, officials said.

The move comes about a week after a girl who visited the park tested positive for the plague. She was treated and has recovered.

"As an extremely precautionary public health measure, flea treatment will be applied to rodent burrows in Tuolumne Meadows Campground because several dead animals were tested and found to be carrying plague," park officials said in a statement.

The campground will be closed from August 17-21. The park itself will remain open, including all the other campgrounds.

Plague is carried by squirrels, chipmunks and other wild rodents and their fleas.

"By eliminating the fleas, we reduce the risk of human exposure and break the cycle of plague in rodents at the sites," said Karen Smith, the director and state health officer for the California Department of Public Health.

People who eat lots of fried food and sugary drinks have a 56 percent higher risk of heart disease compared to those who eat healthier, according to US researchers.

The findings in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association, were based on a six-year study of more than 17,000 people in the United States.

Researchers found that people who regularly ate what was described as a Southern style diet -- fried foods, eggs, processed meats like bacon and ham, and sugary drinks -- faced the highest risk of a heart attack or heart-related death during the next six years.

"Regardless of your gender, race, or where you live, if you frequently eat a Southern-style diet you should be aware of your risk of heart disease and try to make some gradual changes to your diet," said lead researcher James Shikany, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Division of Preventive Medicine.

"Try cutting down the number of times you eat fried foods or processed meats from every day to three days a week as a start, and try substituting baked or grilled chicken or vegetable-based foods."

In the nervous aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing 70 years ago, citizens spent decades on alert for a nuclear war that would wipe out billions in a radioactive firestorm and render Earth uninhabitable.

Yet the apocalypse never came.

Instead an unprecedented period of peace took hold between nuclear-armed global powers aware that a wrong move could wipe out the human race.

Nukes could never stop smaller wars and proxy conflicts -- and look increasingly impotent against modern non-state threats such as jihadist groups or cyber-attacks -- but "they are still a necessary tool", said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear security expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"It is pretty clear that mutually assured destruction has contributed to the absence of global war for the last 70 years," he said.

Nonetheless, as the atomic generation gives way to one that did not grow up building fallout shelters, some experts say nuclear weapons are no longer the ultimate guarantor of global peace.

Growing instability around the world -- the renewed rift between Russia and the West, simmering tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, a drive by China to modernise its nuclear forces and an ever-more bellicose North Korea -- have undermined efforts to reduce the global stockpile of nuclear weapons and keep doomsday at bay.

- Nuclear winter -

With ties between Moscow and the West at Cold War lows, Russia has fallen back on its nuclear threat, boosting its arsenal and increasing flights by strategic bombers, in what NATO has described as "dangerous nuclear sabre-rattling".

US Secretary of State John Kerry has got a helping hand from the Kennedy family since breaking his leg in a low-speed bike accident in May.

The 71-year-old, who is attending a regional security summit in Kuala Lumpur, has been getting around with the help of a polished black walking stick used by two generations of the Kennedy dynasty.

"This cane has a history," Kerry told delegates at a meeting held on the sidelines of an annual security forum hosted by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The walking stick, he explained, was originally owned by Joseph P. Kennedy when he was Washington's ambassador to the United Kingdom during the early stages of the Second World War.

His son John F. Kennedy later used the cane before he became president, as did JFK's youngest brother Teddy who spent much of his life suffering from chronic back pain after he was pulled from the wreckage of a fatal air crash in 1964.

"So when Vicki Kennedy, (Teddy's) widow, heard that I had broken my leg, she knew I was going to need the cane," Kerry told delegates in the Malaysian capital.

Washington's top envoy, who looked to Teddy Kennedy as his political mentor, broke his right femur while riding a bike in the French Alps on May 31 during crunch negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme.

After flying back to Boston for surgery, performed by a physician who had previously replaced both of his hips, secure phone lines were set up in his hospital room so that he could keep working on the Iran deal, he later told the Boston Globe.